Horst Geldmacher

Horst Geldmacher , also called Flötchen (* 1929 in Bochum ; † April 16, 1992 in Emmerich am Rhein ), was a German painter , graphic artist , sculptor , writer and jazz musician .

Life

Graphics and music were the core of Geldmacher's work and his life. His recorder , which he was one of the first to use in jazz , was his constant companion, and spontaneous solo concerts could usually be expected. His musical talent was also reflected in his friendship with Günter Grass .

Horst Geldmacher studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in the late 1940s . To finance his art studies, Geldmacher founded a jazz combo with his friend Günther Scholl in 1948. Scholl, "Scholle" in the Grass novel The Tin Drum , was the man at the banjo . Günter Grass, a lover of ragtime and blues , was the third man with a washboard and thimbles on his fingers. From 1951 to 1954 Grass and Geldmacher lived in a shared attic apartment. The trio broke up when Scholl became a teacher and Grass went to Berlin in 1954.

“Csikós”, Andreasstrasse 7–9 in the old town of Düsseldorf

Geldmacher, also called "Flötchen", played bagpipes in addition to his favorite instrument . The rather unusual jazz combo thrilled the audience on many long evenings at Zum Csikós on Andreasstrasse in Düsseldorf's old town . The "Csikós", which opened in 1950 and began as a jazz bar, had become a popular meeting place for artists due to its proximity to Kom (m) ödchen . First came Kay and Lore Lorentz , others like Bruno Goller , Anatol , Hannes Loos , Hannes and Trude Esser , Kurt Sandweg , Peter Rübsam , Franz Witte , Germán Becerra , Ursula Herking , Hanne Wieder , Elisabeth Flickenschildt , Gustaf Gründgens , Karl-Heinz Stroux and Gert Frobe followed.

In 1959 his jazz picture book O Susanna , which was designed with spirituals , ballads and blues , was published. For the German version, Grass supplied text with images, while Geldmacher was responsible for the graphics.

The friendship with the musician was of great importance to Grass. In his novel Die Blechtrommel he immortalized his band colleague and friend in a literary way, under the name Münzer or Klepp .

Horst Geldmacher furnished pubs and theaters, including the “Victorian Pub” on Königstrasse in Düsseldorf with a ceiling painting. Together with Günter Peltzer, he designed windows in the New Orleans style, a mixture of Memphis and HAP Grieshaber, for “Bobby”, today “KreuzherrenEcke” in Altestadt 14 , a tiny pub with a few narrow benches . He was also named as the inventor of the tinted pub mirror, in which the chalky white night owl still had a “Tyrolean tan” on his face.

Geldmacher brought Peter Rübsam to the bagpipes in 1969 after Rübsam had played the recorder with him in a jazz band. Friends with Hannes Esser and often a guest of the artist group Einbrungen / Wittlaer at the Einbrunger Mühle am Schwarzbach , Geldmacher often made a musical contribution with Eckhard Kohlhöfer, Lüder Ohlwein and Klaus Doldinger .

He became widely known with a terracotta relief for the now demolished Hagen town hall , built in 1965 . This relief reflected the various historical stages in local history along the entire length of the Ratskeller corridor.

The all-rounder lived for the last 20 years at the Alter Markt in Emmerich, enjoyed looking out over the Rhine from the balcony, following life on and by the river and capturing his impressions. Günther Scholl remembered him in his own way: “When he died he had a divorced and an undivorced wife and two with whom he had only one relationship. That was once the Csikós landlady, the tough Trude Schuster, and then one of the Lower Rhine building ceramics. He moved there, where he soon had his first stroke. He mostly sat on the balcony and painted watercolors - about a thousand, one or two a day. [...]. When the Csikós was renovated, the cloakroom was papered with original watercolors by Horst Geldmacher. [...]. "

Horst Geldmacher wrote his own obituary as early as 1983: “Suffered and argued. Drawn and painted. Also cut in linoleum. Almost never paid. With wine and schnapps and beers. For the liver and also the kidneys. "

Born in Bochum, he was almost 63 years old and found his final resting place in Hattingen .

The Hagenring Gallery showed several works by the artist Horst Geldmacher as part of Ruhr.2010 . The Hermann Harry Schmitz Institute in the clock tower, Düsseldorf's smallest museum, dedicated a small exhibition to the graphic artist, painter, sculptor, writer and musician in 2012. Günter Grass honored the Geldmacher show in the clock tower with a greeting: “I can well imagine that I have come across a lot in this exhibition before. I wish all guests that the meeting with Horst Geldmacher, who died much too early, gives you the opportunity to go back to the 1950s, a time when almost anything seemed possible. "

literature

• Horst Geldmacher (illustrator), Günter Grass (translator), Hermann Wilson (collaborator): O Susanna . A jazz picture book. Blues - Ballads - Spirituals - Jazz. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1959.

Web links

• "Flötchen" money maker. Grass friend in the Hagenring. Wochenkurier, July 28, 2010, accessed on May 9, 2015
• Norbert Kohnen: Bo (o) tships of a vagabond. WAZ April 4, 2012, accessed May 9, 2015
• Tongue out. In: Der Spiegel. 36/1963, from: spiegel.de accessed on March 11, 2012 (about Günter Grass and his novels The Tin Drum and Dog Years )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Nik Tarasov: Günter Grass & jazz recorder . Wolfgang Mönninghoff: A man by the name of "Flötchen" . In: Windkanal , 2008, issue 1
2. ↑ Hannes Loos. Biography on Kurt Sandweg Foundation ( Memento of the original from February 15, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Das Csikós ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ The history of the German piping scene ( Memento of the original from November 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ picture terracotta relief by Horst Geldmacher